The Dust of Conflict by Harold Bindloss

THE night was considerably clearer than anybody on board her desired when the schooner "Ventura" headed for the land. It rose in places, black and sharp against the velvety indigo, over her dipping bows, though most of the low littoral was wrapped in obscurity. Harper, the American skipper, leaned upon the helm watching the growing brightness in the east, and a man whose white garments cut against the dusky sea sat upon the rail close beside him. They were both anxious, for there were no lights on that strip of Cuban coast, and the "Ventura" had drifted with the stream in a calm which had complicated Harper's reckoning. He had to find a certain reef-studded bay, and run the schooner into a creek among the mangroves without being seen by the gunboat which he had reason to surmise was looking out for him.

Forward, a cluster of men were sitting about the windlass and leaning on the rail. They were of diverse nationality and doubtful character -- American, Castilian, and African by extraction, though in the case of some of uncertain color it would have been difficult to decide which blood predominated in their veins. It was their task to supply the insurgents with the munitions of war, and they undertook it dispassionately, without any patriotic convictions, for the dollars it would bring. Indeed, most of them were not held in much esteem in the countries they belonged to, or they would not in all probability have been there on board the "Ventura."